Weekly Update March 1: Women-Centric, Directed, Written Movies Playing Near You

Director
Park Chan-Wook’s first English language film (fitting in well with his revenge
trilogy including his most famous, Oldboy), Stoker, fits rather seamlessly into
Janisse’s work. The film looks at India Stoker (Mia Wasikowska) who loses
her beloved father (Dermot Mulroney) in a car accident on her 18th birthday.
Through Chan-Wook’s masterful use of imagery, we get right off the bat that
India has some unusual personal ticks.

She
has a complicated, at best, relationship with her emotionally fragile and
jealous mother, Evie (Nicole Kidman) which becomes further strained with the
strange appearance of India’s unknown Uncle Charlie (Matthew Goode). India and
Uncle Charlie share an immediate and increasingly strange bond as India becomes
more interested in why Charlie has mysteriously reappeared after all this
time–setting India up for discovering things she didn’t know about herself.Read more…

War
Witch

Komona
(Rachel Mwanza) is only 12 years old when she is kidnapped by rebel soldiers
and enslaved to a life of guerrilla warfare in the African jungle. Forced to
commit unspeakable acts of brutality, she finds hope for survival in
protective, ghost-like visions (inspiring a rebel chief to anoint her “War
Witch”), and in a tender relationship with a fellow soldier named Magician
(Serge Kanyinda). Together, they manage to escape the rebels’ clutches, and a
normal life finally seems within reach. But after their freedom proves
short-lived, Komona realizes she must find a way to bury the ghosts of her
past. (From Press Materials)

Future
Weather – Directed and Written by Jenny Deller

Abandoned
by her dreamer single mom, a teenage loner becomes obsessed with ecological
disaster, forcing her and her grandmother, a functioning alcoholic, to rethink
their futures. (From Indiewire)

It
is instantly recognizable – musical shorthand for anything Jewish, a happy
party tune that you dance to at weddings, bar mitzvahs and even at Major League
Baseball games. It conjures up wistful
smiles, memories of generations past…and no shortage of eye rolling. But as
audiences will discover in Hava Nagila (The Movie), the song is much more than
a tale of Jewish kitsch and bad bar mitzvah fashions. It carries with it an
entire constellation of history, values and hopes for the future. In its own
believe-it-or-not way, Hava Nagila encapsulates the Jewish journey over
the past 150 years. It also reveals the power of one song to express and sustain
identity, to transmit lessons across generations and to bridge cultural divides
and connect us all on a universal level. (From Press Materials)

A Place At The Table – Directed by
Kristi Jacobsen and Lori Silverbush (doc)

Forty-nine million people in the
U.S.–one in four children–don’t know where their next meal is coming from.
Directors Kristi Jacobson and Lori Silverbush examine the issue of hunger in
America through the lens of three people struggling with food insecurity:
Barbie, a single Philadelphia mother who grew up in poverty and is trying to
provide a better life for her two kids; Rosie, a Colorado fifth-grader who
often has to depend on friends and neighbors to feed her and has trouble
concentrating in school; and Tremonica, a Mississippi second-grader whose
asthma and health issues are exacerbated by the largely empty calories her
hardworking mother can afford. Ultimately, A Place at the Table shows us how
hunger poses serious economic, social and cultural implications for our nation,
and that it could be solved once and for all, if the American public decides –
as they have in the past – that making healthy food available and affordable is
in the best interest of us all. (From Indiewire)